


Things We Do Not Say

by Erised_Rain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erised_Rain/pseuds/Erised_Rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boys celebrate Christmas in Paris, a certain mirror is way out of line, James might be a bit jealous and some things simply can’t be put into words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Do Not Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brighty18](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=brighty18).



Paris is alive.  
  
It’s  _breathing_. Frosted, damp, wide-eyed. The sky rises white over it, blurred at the edges by street lamps and Christmas lights. The world is different here, loud, full of men and women with funny hats and children clutching brown paper bags in their hands.  _Bienvenue en France_ , echoes across the boulevards  _‘Roasted chestnuts, Monsieur? Four franks only, oui?’_  Every corner smells like mulled wine, gingerbread cookies, peppermint; like pine needles pressed in an old herbarium. And in the heart of it all Seine is pulsating with life.   
  
Not at all like London, Sirius thinks, where everything seems to exist in tasteless shades of grey, washed-out and plastic, giving an old man sort of grunt when the winds are too strong. He breathes in too and flicks his cigarette out through the window of a hotel room. “Almost midnight now.” he announces, snow in his hair, nose and cheekbones colored winter-red. “Happy, happy, happy fucking Christmas, you lousy excuses for friends.“ he grins, raising his glass. French wines are heavily bittersweet and they scrape at your throat if you drink too fast.   
  
“I’m rich, handsome, obscenely charming, perfectly shaggable male specimen and I’m stuck in this hotel room with you wankers because the werewolf here is coughing out his insides all over the carpet. So much for Christmas adventure!” he says, but there’s no resentment in it. It’s just Sirius being Sirius, harsh humour and casual arrogance without reservations.  
  
“Delusional.” huffs James. “You know, just because you’re stuck in here doesn’t mean your ‘obscenely charming’ libido has to suffer.” He smiles mysteriously.  
  
Sirius doesn’t like this grown-up voice James has developed lately, it always turns jokes into something serious without anything specific ever being said.  
  
“Are you suggesting debauchery, James?” Sirius wiggles an eyebrow.  
  
“Sure, Padfoot. I’ll shag you rotten, just gimme a second to drink in the beauty of this 5 star hotel room before we defile it. I’m thinking we should start with the bathroom.”   
  
“Go bend over a sink then. I’ll be there in a min.”  
  
“Bathtub. More leverage. And you’ll be doing the bending, mutt.”  
  
“Ah, that is what they call  _wishful thinking_ , mate. And for the record, your mind is a sickly dark place.”  
  
“Ta, I try.” James snickers.  
  
“My cousin thinks you’re not...what was that you said – ah, shaggable.” Peter says, hiding a hiccup in his sleeve. “She said you ‘ave some disturbing  _gleam_  in your eye. Nah, ‘t wasn’t that…Crazy? Mental? Hmm…oh,  _maniacal_! I believe that’s the word, yes! Maniacal. Maniacal gleam.”  
  
“Sloshed.” James concludes wisely, with a stab of his cigarette to the air. “Pete’s sloooooshed.”  
  
“Your cousin, Wormtail, looks like a product of a drunken night between a cave troll and Snape’s pubic hair. I don’t give a rat’s arse what she thinks. No pun intended.” Sirius says casually and James cackles. It’s mean but he’s not wrong.  
  
“She kinda does, doesn’t she?” Peter considers, spilling a little wine on the floor. ”She’s - HEY!”  
  
“Your  _mother_ , on the other hand,” Sirius grins slyly. “I wouldn’t mind giving her - well, you’re a big boy, surely you must know.” But he uses terribly crude hand gesture to demonstrate anyway.  
  
Peter rolls his eyes. “Very mature, Sirius. When the werewolf is done with the bleeding I’ll tell him you're starting with ‘your mother’ jokes again. Y’know how he hates that.” He threatens, unspoken  _'I-know'_ curled around the edges of his words. Sometimes Sirius fears that James and Peter see everything, sometimes he thinks he doesn’t even care.  
  
“The werewolf is right over here and can hear you dimwits perfectly.” Remus mumbles sleepily, a mountain of blankets in the curve of the couch. The full moon was only a day ago and he insisted on staying home because, in heaven’s name, he didn’t want to ruin their plans ( _You go, I’ll be fine, honest. Sod off, Sirius, I said no. Stop looking at me like that._ ) But Sirius is a stubborn bastard and this is their last boys-only Christmas, the last one with smelly socks, suspicious tissues, empty beer bottles and pocketfuls of licorice snaps. The last one before  _real life_.  
  
Besides, Sirius doesn’t give a shit about Paris, it’s just a place with strange people and thirty eight different types of cheese. They’re here because he knows Remus has always wanted to see  _Montparnasse, Montmartre, Champs-Élysées_  - places whose names Sirius can’t even pronounce. Tomorrow he will, Sirius hopes.  
  
But right now Remus stretches; arms bony, fragile, scars shining silver on the inside of his elbow. He is drunk on sleep, lulled by warmth, wearing his favorite tatty T-shirt, the grey one with left sleeve slightly longer than the right one. A hideous thing really.  
  
Sirius is watching him, sometimes he thinks that’s all he ever does. He can see the slow, tired rise of Remus’s chest, the half-awake pulse in his jugular.   
  
 _Bump............................ba-bump........................ba-bump.......................ba-bump_  
  
He leans over the arm of the couch. “How’s your head?” he asks quietly, his own heart hammering, which is fairly ridiculous isn’t it. But Merlin, Sirius wants so badly to touch - to  _feel_  rattling behind Remus’s eyelids, to trace the curve of Remus’s jaw with his thumb and hide a smile behind his ear. He wants to taste Remus’s skin; the freckles, the scars, the back of his knee, the inside of his thigh. How would Remus’s hair look like tangled in his hand, he wonders, would he feel the wild rush of Remus’s blood if he pressed his lips to the hollow of his throat? Would he gasp?  
  
Would Remus gasp?  
  
He wonders how it would be to plant a kiss on the delicate ‘S’ of Remus’s collarbone or between his shoulder blades or on the corner of his mouth. It would taste like chocolate and sleep, he thinks. Like lingering summer and red peaches, like August.  
  
“Better.” Remus says, heavy-eyed. He smiles - just that - and Sirius knows. He’s losing it, he is. It’s a strange thing. Still new, electrifyingly fragile. One day you just wake up and discover one corner in yourself, one that you didn’t even know existed, and you realize that someone has been sleeping in there for days, months, years without paying a rent.  
  
“You’re lying.” Sirius says.   
  
“I’m not lying.”  
  
“Pfft bollocks. Bloody liar is what you are.”  
  
“Ah, charming as always.”  
  
Sirius grins. “Don’t fuck with me, werewolf.”  
  
“Hmf.” Remus makes some strange noise and his face pinks up from the warmth of the room. Or is it that, Sirius wonders, is it. And then he coughs sharply.  
  
“Don’t decompose on me now. It’s almost midnight.” Sirius says but his words come out quiet, soft, worried.  
  
“Am not.”  
  
“You’re doing a remarkable impersonation of someone who is.”  
  
“How rude of me.” Remus yawns.  
  
Sirius is quiet for a moment. “It’s snowing.”   
  
“Hmm, is it now? I wouldn’t worry. Happens regularly around this time of the year.” Remus’s eyes are bright, smiling.  
  
“Bastard.” Sirius whispers affectionately, realizing how easy it would be to count freckles on Remus’s nose, right now, right here. But he doesn’t.   
  
He is silent instead and he thinks maybe he has forgotten how to move, how to speak, how to breathe at all. Paris is alive and young, wide awake rushing into the snowy night. The clock strikes twelve. Notre Dame Cathedral shouts  _Ave Maria_  across the city avenues.   
  
“It’s-“ starts Sirius but Remus’s hand reaches out, finding his wrist in the space between them. For a moment everything fades out, blurry, insignificant, wrapped in the noise of Paris’s distant bells. He curls his fingers around the thudding rhythm of Sirius’s radial artery and brushes his thumb along the life-line of Sirius’s palm.  
  
 _Bump.............ba-bump....ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-babumpbabumpbabump_  
  
 _Oh._  thinks Sirius.  _You too? You are, aren’t you? In-?_  
  
“Merry Christmas, Padfoot.” Remus says quietly.  
  
“Merry Christmas, Moony.” Sirius leans down and tucks the words in the disheveled mess of copper-brown hair. “Merry Christmas.”   
  
 _“Ahhh. _l’amour_  naissant.”_ The mirror on the wall sighs. French people are soppy, drinking romance and eating passion, unrestrained, sugary and sometimes way too opinionated. Apparently, French mirrors in wizarding hotels are no different. “ _Oh là là_.”  
  
“I have no idea what you just said but if they don’t sort themselves out and shag soon I am going to kill someone. Oblivious plonkers.“ James Potter, however, doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body. But he isn’t blind and he thinks no friend (least of all one as amazing as himself) could have missed the way Sirius’s happiness found its place in the curve of Remus’s smile.   
  
James Potter truly is an amazing friend, probably the best in the business, but he’s never been particularly good with sharing. There’s a part of his brain, child-like, prone to jealousy, that just wants to put fish-guts in Sirius’s shoes, rat him out to McGonagall because of that thing with the purple sheep and maybe pout for a while.  
  
Then there’s the other part. The other part, older, grown-up, that thinks about war, green eyes and family instead of dungbombs and exploding cauldrons; the part that can’t hide a knowing smile as he watches how Remus closes his eyes, nose tucked into the front of Sirius’s shirt.  
  
“Merry Christmas, you tossers.” he says quietly, a soft clap on Peter’s shoulders. “More wine, Pete my friend?”  
  
Peter considers briefly. “Ah, bugger everything, it’s gonna end up down the fucking toilet anyway.  _À votre santé_ , Prongs,  _à votre santé_.” he grins opening another bottle.  
  
Outside Paris breathes.


End file.
